


if we could win just one small touch

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Conflict Resolution, F/M, Masturbation, Phil Coulson has a lot of guilt, Phone Sex, mentions of Coulson/Rosalind, mentions of oral sex, season 3 future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:33:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5315234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 3 feels & phone sex. Daisy and Coulson's relationship has been strained, mostly because Coulson is carrying around a lot of guilt. Daisy calls from a mission with a specific idea on how to improve things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if we could win just one small touch

“Hi.”

“...hi.”

There’s a long, awkward silence between that falls them, and he has no idea how to fill it. But then, she’s the one who called, so he leans back in his chair, phone pressed to his ear, and leaves it up to her.

“I just wanted to check on how things are going at the base.”

“Everything is fine,” he tells her, and it comes across a little more irritated than he means it. But, well, he doesn’t need her acting like he’s completely incompetent, even if he understands why she’d think so.

“I assumed it was.”

“Sure.”

Coulson squeezes his eyes shut. It’s felt like he’s walking on eggshells around her for _months_ now, and he doesn’t fully understand why. Yes, part of it is his own guilt, even though she had absolved him, had promised him that there was no ill will over the way he brought the ATCU in, over the way things blew up.

So he’s not sure why he always feels like she’s judging him, why he always feels like she’s watching him.

“I didn’t call to check up on you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You’re not worried I’ve brought another questionable woman home while you’re gone?”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“You _are_ worried about that.”

“Not, not like you’re thinking.”

“I promise not to wreck SHIELD while you’re undercover.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she repeats.

“Then what can I do for you, Daisy?”

It’s so formal, weirdly cold, and he wonders when he became this person.

He can hear her swallow on the other end of the line, and when she speaks her voice is too small.

“I just missed you, and I thought this would be easier. I guess I was wrong.”

It brings him up short.

“You’ve been gone for ten hours.”

“Yeah, that’s —”

That’s not what she means, he realizes. He _knows_ . She hasn’t missed him since she left for this mission ten hours ago, she’s missed him bigger and longer than that and _god_ he has, too.

He’s missed her so much it hurts.

It occurs to him that this is the longest conversation they’ve had since everything happened and that he’s completely fucking blowing it by acting like she’s accusing him of something when she’s not.

When she just called because she missed him.  

He hears some shuffling on the other end of the phone, and when she speaks again, it’s with her team leader voice — louder, more sure, more authoritative.

“I’ll see you next week, Phil. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” he cuts in quickly, suddenly really sure that he can’t let her hang up the phone, that this is bigger and better and more.

“Lately it feels like I’m _always_ bothering you.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re always short with me. You look at me like you think I’m judging you.”

“Aren’t you?”

“ _No_ . I told you, I understand all that and _you’re_ the one who got hurt the worst out of everything that happened.”

“I brought bad guys into our house. I made you play nice with people who wanted to capture you like an animal.”

“You did it because you were trying to do the right thing. Do you think I don’t understand that?”

“Sometimes I wish you’d just yell at me,” he admits, more honest than he’s probably been in months.

“Yell at you?”

“You look at me all the time like I’ve betrayed you —”

“I do not.”

“Well you should.”

“Why would I yell at you? You got your heart broken —”

“I did _not_ get my heart broken.”

“You were running all over the base talking about _Rosalind_ this and _Rosalind_ that. Don’t even pretend you weren’t smitten.”

“Maybe I was,” he admits, “but it was never…”

“It never involved your heart?”

“It couldn’t. We were spies and we both knew that.”

She’s silent on the other end of the line.

“Maybe I just think that’s really sad, Coulson.”

“It was just sex.”

She laughs slightly, and he can’t tell if it sounds more sad or more awkward.

“I’ve never had _just sex_ , so maybe I’ll never understand.”

And it’s surreal for a moment — Daisy’s voice in his ear saying _sex_. Talking to Daisy about sex. Thinking about Daisy having sex.

That brings up a slew of mental images he’s better off not having, ones he’s gotten really really good at not thinking about.

“You’ve never been with someone just because you needed...to be with someone?”

“With someone I didn’t love? Or at least care for? With someone I didn’t _trust_? No. No, I…”

“You need trust.”

“Yeah. To have sex with someone, I need to trust them. And after everything with Ward, it’s just...harder.”

Coulson grits his teeth at that memory, at how her trust was betrayed, at how it’s affected her more than she’s ever openly acknowledged to him before.

“You want me to have him killed again?”

He can hear her smile at his interjection.

“Just, is that all sex is to you? Something you do with someone because maybe you need to? Because I would wish better for you than that.”

“Better for me?”

“You deserve to have someone that loves you, Phil. Not just someone who thinks you can be useful to them.”

He swallows against a lump in his throat, at the thought that Daisy thinks he deserves something that _nice_. At the thought that Daisy thinks he deserves to be loved.

“The part of my life where I’m wishing for someone to love me is over.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Daisy —”

“It is. That’s crap. I saw your face when you talked about her. You can’t tell me you didn’t hope that she —”

“I didn’t hope for her to love me. I was excited at the prospect of having that kind of connection again, but —”

“What kind of connection?”

“Sex,” he answers resting his head back on his chair.

“I thought it was _just sex_.”

“It is,” he defends himself. “But it’s also... _sex_.”

 _Sex_ . It hits again, the surreal nature of this conversation. It helps that he can’t see her face; it helps that she can’t see his face when he thinks about _her_ and _sex_ in the same sentence.

Daisy and sex.

“You missed sex.”

“Didn’t you? Before you and Lincoln —”

“Lincoln and I _never_.”

“What?”

It actually gives him pause, makes him wonder exactly what’s been going on on the base these past couple of months while he’s apparently been assuming things. God knows, he hasn’t wanted to watch the two of them closely enough to get a real sense of what’s between them.

“It’s never felt right to me.”

“And you don’t just have sex because you need it.”

“No.”

“Don’t you _miss_ it?”

Skin and mouths and touch, feeling your body as something good, feeling your body as something that gives you pleasure and that can make someone else feel good, too.

God, he misses sex, still. Somehow more than he did before… Before.

“Of course I miss it. I just don’t understand missing it so much that you would do it with someone who didn’t even care for you you. Who you didn’t trust.”

He closes his eyes, can’t help but feel something like shame — nothing new, nothing really different than he’s been feeling since everything went down with Rosalind.

“I thought it would make me feel more...human. And I thought I needed that.”

“And did it?”

“I’m not sure,” he admits. “In some ways, it was good. But it wasn’t…”

There’s a long pause, and he would swear Daisy is awkward, he would swear Daisy is struggling to find words, he would swear she’s thinking about _him_ and _sex_ and being flustered.

But he’s probably just projecting.

“You did it because you hoped that she would make you feel...human.”

“I suppose I did.”

“And I guess I couldn’t have helped with that.”

She sounds almost hurt, and he doesn’t understand it at all, she makes it sound like...

“Daisy?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“The fact that you’re...Inhuman. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re…”

“Human?”

She kind of laughs at the word.

He fumbles over words, not sure what it is he means to say, until she sighs on the other end of the line.

“Just, if you needed someone to make you feel human, it wouldn’t be me.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you cut me out and went to her.”

“I didn’t cut you out. I kept you in the loop on every detail of my plan with her.”

“Except for the sex.”

His pulse picks up, and he can feel himself flush at the promise of...something.

“Does it... _bother_ you that I had sex with her?”

“Of course it does!”

“Because you want better for me.”

“Phil...stop pretending you’re not understanding me.”

“Be more clear about what you mean,” he counters.

“If you and I had sex, would it be _just sex_?”

It’s like her question knocks the air out of him.

“What…” He’s twisted around himself, flustered and tongue-tied. “What are you saying?”

“Have you thought about it before? About the two of us…”

There’s a long silence, and he can hear her moving about — he wishes he could picture her, wishes he could see her just for a moment.

“It’s not something I let myself think about.”

“Why?”

“You _know_ why.”

“ _Why,_ Coulson?”

“Daisy,” he whispers her name into the phone. “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“Yes you do.”

“Did you wait until you were two thousand miles away to tell me you want to have sex with me?”

“I’ve barely been able to get you to stay in the same room with me for the past month,” she half-justifies herself. “And you know it’s not just sex.”

It’s dizzying, the way his world shifts in a moment.

“No, it wouldn’t be just sex.”

“And would that be...a bad thing?”

Coulson squirms in his chair.

“I don’t know,” he admits, voice too quiet, to raw.

He can hear her breathing, just a little too fast to be normal, like she’s working up the courage to say something, but he cuts in before she has a chance.

“Before we went our separate ways, Rosalind told me that I’m not capable of letting people in.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I’m not so sure. It’s never been easy for me to be fully honest with people.”

“You’re a spy. As you’ve told me, it sort of comes with the territory?”

“Maybe. But the only person I’ve been really honest with in...as long as I can remember...is…”

“Is?”

“You,” he whispers.

He can hear her draw in a sharp breath and let it out.

“That kind of seems to support my idea that we should have sex.”

Coulson laughs, a startled sound over the receiver.

“Does it?”

“We trust each other. We _love_ each other.”

 _Yes_ , he wants to tell her. _Yes,_ they love each other. _Yes,_ he loves her. He doesn’t say it, though.

“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he grinds out instead.

“You’re basically the least disappointing person I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve been disappointed with me lately.”

“I’ve been _missing_ you lately.”

He exhales, long slow breath out, like he’s been holding his breath for months.

“I miss you, too.”

“Tell me how you miss me.”

“You’re… You…” He licks his lips.

“What am I?”

“You’re _Daisy_.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

She sounds amused, and Coulson swallows in embarrassment.

“Yes. A very good thing.”

“I really want to kiss you, Phil.”

His heart flutters in his chest, his palms are sweaty, and he suddenly feels like a boy, like a boy in totally new territory.

“I think I’d like that.”

“You think?”

“I _know_ ,” he corrects himself. “I know I’d like you to kiss me.”

There’s a long pause, and he’s wondering if he’s supposed to say something or do something to fill it.

“Now’s the part where you say something you’d like to do to me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, see — I want to kiss you on the lips, until you’re gasping for breath against my mouth. So you tell me you want to kiss my neck.”

He feels like his heart might pound through his chest, it’s beating so hard and so fast behind his ribs.

“Is that something you’d like?” His voice is too high-pitched, too fast.

“Yes,” she sighs.

“I want to run my fingers through your hair.”

“My hair?”

“Yeah,” he takes a deep breath, maybe shoring up courage. “Since you cut it, I’ve been wanting to...touch it.”

“Just since I cut it?”

“Maybe always,” he allows, and he swears he can hear her smile.

“How are you going to run your fingers through my hair?”

He gets hung up on the thought of it, of touching her like he’s tried so hard not to ever ever think about, and stutters again, awkward in his growing arousal.

“Isn’t it supposed to be your turn to tell me something now?”

“Fair’s fair,” she agrees, like this is quid pro quo. “I want to touch your hair, too.”

“I wish I had more of it for you to touch.”

She laughs at his joke, and he wonders if she knows that it’s a real fear. He’d be willing to bet a lot of money that none of Daisy’s past sexual partners has had much in the way of a receding hairline. And it’s not a looks thing, not exactly, but he’s so old compared to her.

“You’ve got plenty of hair,” she sighs, though, like this isn’t a concern. “I like the way you’ve been wearing it, cut really short. I want to scratch my nails through it.”

His breath speeds up, more than it probably should.

“How?”

“What happened to being fair, Coulson?” She’s teasing him, he knows, so he stays silent and waits for her to answer. “While you’re sitting down,” she finally tells him. “While you’re sitting down looking all serious and up in your head, I want to walk up in front of you and run my nails through your hair.”

There’s a silence, and she doesn’t need to ask for him to answer:

“Behind you. I want to come up behind you and run my hand up your neck, into your hair.”

“Yeah?” He swears she sounds _aroused_ , like really aroused, by this relatively basic image.

“Since you cut it, your neck is so…”

“So…?”

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispers, like he’s defeated, like there’s no point in pretending to have dignity anymore, in pretending that he hasn’t noticed her far too much and far too often. He’s hard in his jeans just thinking about her, about her hair and her neck.

“So you’re going to walk up behind me and touch the back of my neck, and then run your fingers up into my hair.” She takes a deep breath, her exhale loud through the receiver. “And then kiss the back of my neck, slowly.”

She says it like it’s an order, like this was her idea instead of his, and for some reason that makes it better.

“Then what, Coulson?”

He wants to lose himself in the image she’s painting, he wants to think about nothing more than running his lips up her neck, pressing his body against hers, but he can’t quite shake the strangeness of the moment.

“Are we having phone sex right now?”

“I think _having_ is a strong word. Some of us are trying harder than others,” Daisy answers, more than a little snarky about it. 

He can't quite hold back a quiet laugh.

“Right now, are you…”

“Right now, I’m lying on a hotel bed in my pajamas thinking about your lips on my neck.”

“ _Fuck_.”

Her words hit him like she’s touching him, and his cock throbs at just the thought of her _wanting_ him.

“I wish I could see you,” he whispers, unable to stop himself from dropping his hand to his groin, from touching himself through his jeans, rubbing over too-thick denim.

“I think you’d like what you saw.”

“And what would I see?”

“Mmm,” there’s a breath and a rustle of fabric. “You’d see me sliding out of my sweats.”

He can picture it: Daisy on a bed, her skin brown against white hotel sheets, her bare legs coming into view, and his hand moves faster over his cock.

“What’s underneath?”

“Are you asking what my underwear look like?”

He swallows.

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“Red.”

It shocks him for some reason.

“Red?”

“Hmm,” she agrees. “Red lace. A thong.”

Coulson honestly has a hard time pulling up the image of Daisy in nice lingerie, can’t imagine it as an expense she’s bothered with before. His hand stills on his cock, but he keeps up the gentle pressure of the heel of his hand.

“In my experience, women choose red lace thongs when they want someone to see them. Not when they’re going to bed alone.”

Daisy laughs on the other end of the line.

“Fine. They’re white cotton briefs. Not very sexy.”

“No, I think they’re probably very sexy,” he answers, swallowing and squeezing his fingers around himself as much as he can through his jeans, moving his palm again.

“I do have some nice things, though.”

“Including a red lace thong?”

“That’s classified,” she teases, and Coulson can feel his face melt into a stupid grin. “You’ll need a higher access level to find out.”

“And how do I get that?”

“You could start by unzipping your jeans.”

He spares a thought for the door of his office, but he knows no one will come barging in after nine o’clock at night. The only one who ever would have dared is Daisy.

So he does, the sound of the zipper loud in the silence of the room, and then without prompting he unbuckles his belt so he can slide his jeans down just a little, just enough that he can more easily touch himself.

“Hmm, good boy, Phil.”

Her voice is honey dripping down his spine, making his cock throb, and he groans and grasps himself through his boxers, stroking twice before releasing himself.

“What’s underneath?”

“Boxers,” he shrugs. “Basic white ones.”

“The stretchy kind, or the loose ones?”

“Stretchy,” he answers, squeezing his fingers around his cock again because Daisy is thinking about his underwear, about him in his underwear. It’s almost too much to think about.

“Simmons bet me once that you wear Captain America boxers.”

It makes him chuckle just a little, enough that he can release his grip on himself for a moment.

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Daisy laughs, bright and happy and _good_ , and he doesn’t hear her laugh enough. He slips his hand down between his legs, cups his balls over his boxers, and tries to keep from jacking off, from just making himself come at the sound.

She’s silent for a long moment, and then he hears her exhale too hard, a little breathy moan at the end.

“God, Daisy, are you touching yourself?”

“Uh huh. Aren’t you?”

He shoves his boxers down his thighs and wraps his hand around himself, stroking once slowly before he pulls back to spit in his palm.

“Tell me?” He asks the question desperately as he curves his hand around the head of his cock, already too close to the edge.

“My hand under my panties. You?”

“I pushed down my boxers.”

She exhales hard at that.

“Shit, Coulson.” There’s another rustle and then she moans louder. “Now we match.”

He grunts and starts stroking himself with purpose, and things fall quiet between them, just too-harsh breaths of two people driving themselves to the edge.

“Tell me something you want?” Daisy asks, and her voice is higher pitched than he’s used to, higher pitched like she’s straining towards orgasm.

“I want to _taste_ you,” he groans, and has to pull his hand off himself so he doesn’t come before she does as he imagines it — crawling between Daisy’s legs, Daisy’s thighs wrapped around his ears, Daisy’s arousal on his tongue.

She moans on the other end of the line, and he squeezes the base of his cock, gritting his teeth because he’s too close to the edge, too far gone.

“I want to eat you out. I want to make you come.”

“Yes,” is all she answers between harsh breaths and quiet, barely-there moans that get increasingly higher pitched.

He can’t hold back anymore, can’t stop himself from licking his palm and jacking off in earnest as he listens to her, as he thinks about her.

He breaks first, grunting her name desperately into the phone as he comes in his hand, and it’s gratifying to hear her let go a moment later — as though maybe listening to him helped push her over the edge.

There’s a long silence once she’s done — once she’s let out a lower, quiet moan and her breath has evened out a bit — and Coulson tucks his phone against his shoulder as he fumbles for a tissue to wipe off his right hand.

“I’d like you to do that for real when I get back,” she whispers a moment later, sounding tentative. As though there’s anything left to be tentative about.

“Yes,” is all he can answer. “Yes, I…”

“Good then.”

He smiles against his phone.

“Will you call again tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, and he smiles. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you about how I want to go down on you while you’re sitting at your desk with your jeans open and your boxers pulled down.”

Coulson lets out a loud breath and struggles to swallow.

“I think I’ll enjoy hearing about that.”

“You will,” she promises, and he can’t help but laugh. There’s a lightness, an ease in his chest that’s been missing for so long; he forgot he could feel this good.

“I love you,” he tells her because he does, because he means it, and because he was too chickenshit to say it earlier. Because he wants her to know that between them, it’s always going to mean something.

“I know,” Daisy tells him, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “And I love you, too. And now, we can love each other like this. Right?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, resting his head back on his chair.

“It’s late,” Daisy whispers, like she’s just looked at a clock for the first time in hours. It’s only just after ten at the Playground, but that means it’s past 1am her time. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Phil.”

“Goodnight.”

“Night.”

There's a space of another breath between them before she hangs up, and Coulson can't help but smile as he tugs his jeans up and gets ready for bed.

 


End file.
